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The UK Stem Cell Bank (UKSCB) facilitates the use and sharing of quality-controlled stem cell lines to support scientific research and clinical development of stem cell therapies. The work of the UK Stem Cell Bank covers three main areas: banking for all UK-derived human embryonic stem cell lines, research in the standardisation, quality and safety of human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-based products, and regulation regarding international best practice, policies and guidelines relating to stem cell use and regulation around the world.

NeuronDB provides a dynamically searchable database of three types of neuronal properties: voltage gated conductances, neurotransmitter receptors, and neurotransmitter substances. It contains tools that provide for integration of these properties in a given type of neuron and compartment, and for comparison of properties across different types of neurons and compartments.

MDM-Portal (Medical Data-Models) is a meta-data registry for creating, analysing, sharing and reusing medical forms, developed by the Institute of Medical Informatics, Heidelberg University Hospital in Germany. see also https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0044-1786839 Electronic forms for documentation of patient data are an integral part within the workflow of physicians. A huge amount of data is collected either through routine documentation forms (EHRs) for electronic health records or as case report forms (CRFs) for clinical trials. This raises major scientific challenges for health care, since different health information systems are not necessarily compatible with each other and thus information exchange of structured data is hampered. Software vendors provide a variety of individual documentation forms according to their standard contracts, which function as isolated applications. Furthermore, free availability of those forms is rarely the case. Currently less than 5 % of medical forms are freely accessible. Based on this lack of transparency harmonization of data models in health care is extremely cumbersome, thus work and know-how of completed clinical trials and routine documentation in hospitals are hard to be re-used. The MDM-Portal serves as an infrastructure for academic (non-commercial) medical research to contribute a solution to this problem. It already contains more than 25,000 system-independent forms (CDISC ODM Format, www.cdisc.org, Operational Data Model) with more than 600,000 data-elements. This enables researchers to view, discuss, download and export forms in most common technical formats such as PDF, CSV, Excel, SQL, SPSS, R, etc. A growing user community will lead to a growing database of medical forms. In this matter, we would like to encourage all medical researchers to register and add forms and discuss existing forms.

PDX Finder is an open repository for the upload and storage of clinical, genomic and functional Patient-Derived Xenograph (PDX) data which provides a comprehensive global catalogue of PDX models available for researchers across distributed repository databases. Integrated views are provided for histopathological image data, molecular classification of tumors, host mouse strain metadata, tumor genomic data and metrics on tumor response to chemotherapeutics. The data model for PDX Finder is based on the minimal information standard for PDX models developed in collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders who create and/or use PDX models in basic and pre-clinical cancer research.

The ETOX database allows access to effects information from aquatic and terrestrial ecotoxicology. Furthermore, ETOX contains information on various national and international environmental quality guidelines, targets, standards, criteria, and limit values. In focus are substances which are relevant for assessment of surface water pollution to trigger the development of environmental quality standards according to Water Framework Directive 60/2000/EC.